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Harbingers of sputnik: The amateur radio preparations in the Soviet Union

1999; Routledge; Volume: 16; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/07341519908581957

1477-2620

Rip Bulkeley,

Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies

Abstract After recapitulating and re‐evaluating the principal early signals that the Soviet Union was planning to launch an artificial earth satellite (Sputnik 1) in 1957, which have long been familiar to space historians, this article presents some additional pre‐sputnik material from Radio, the Soviet government's monthly magazine for radio amateurs, and from other sources, which has not previously been identified by western scholars. The preparations of the Soviet radio amateurs for satellite tracking are also described. The fact that western radio amateurs were no more successful in discovering Soviet intentions, at the time, than the scientists or the intelligence agencies, is documented and discussed. To complete the picture, contemporary assessments of the scientific value of amateur radio observations of the early satellites are surveyed. The article concludes by discussing the surprise aspect of the first sputniks in the light of the fresh information presented, and by noting some still unanswered historical questions. Notes Much of the primary research on which this article is based received support at different times from the Royal Society, the Leverhulme Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution, for which the author would like to reiterate his thanks. In addition to the assistance of staff at the various archives and libraries referred to, the author would like particularly to acknowledge the generous help of the following: John Crab‐be, Radio Society of Great Britain; Janice Goldblum, U.S. National Academy of Sciences; Pat Gowen, AMSAT‐UK; Iao Katagiri, RAND Corporation; Leonid Labutin, Society of Russian Radio Amateurs; Cathy Lewis, National Air and Space Museum, Washington; Nikolay Kazanskiy, ex‐president, Soviet Amateur Radio Federation; L.R. Shepherd, British Interplanetary Society; and Boris Stepanov, Radio magazine, Moscow.